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Morgan Stanley has reaped an immediate return from the appointment to its German board of Klaus Zumwinkel, chief executive of Deutsche Post.

Zumwinkel: appointment pays off

Zumwinkel was appointed a non-executive of Morgan Stanley last year and the bank has become first-time mergers and acquisitions adviser for the German post office’s planned £3.5bn (€5.2bn) acquisition of Exel, a UK logistics company. Exel’s board last week agreed to open the books to Deutsche Post.

The investment banking mandate is Morgan Stanley’s second for Deutsche Post. Days after becoming a Morgan Stanley director, Zumwinkel appointed the US bank to work on Deutsche Post’s flotation of Postbank.

However, bankers are more intrigued by what they regard as a snub by Deutsche Post to Deutsche Bank, its leading banking adviser for the past decade. During Postbank’s flotation, Zumwinkel criticised the bank for leaking a memo suggesting its valuation was lower than Deutsche Post’s.

A senior banker said: “This is a clear case of Deutsche Post punishing Deutsche Bank, although I would not rule out them reappearing in future.”

Deutsche Bank has played down missing out on a role but research by Dealogic, the investment data provider, revealed that Deutsche Post has paid more in investment banking fees in the past decade to Deutsche than to any other bank.

The fight taking place in the UK for FTSE 100 brokerships meant that UBS, Deutsche Post’s second most regular adviser, was working for its target. UBS replaced HSBC as joint broker to Exel this year, which means that it – unlike Deutsche Bank – has a guaranteed fee for the deal.

Deutsche Bank is separated from the summit of German M&A by €5.2bn ($6.5bn) – the value of the Exel deal – but will have ample opportunity to rectify the situation by the end of the year. Announced German M&A activity stands at €100bn, and has outstripped last year’s total of €87bn.

A banker said: “This time last year, German M&A had almost ground to a halt, except for activity by private equity firms. The fact that German corporates are looking at foreign acquisitions shows how buoyant the market is. There are a lot more deals involving German corporates in the pipeline.”